Laurentian University: A History (review)

Writing the history of a university can seem like a form of masochism. (Disclosure: I am the author of a recently published history of York University.) There are many ways of getting it wrong, and many people to tell you that you have erred. Moreover, what 'getting it right' means is not clear, for that depends in large part on which audience is targeted. If alumni and their families are the primary target group, a more popular approach is indicated. If faculty members and academics more generally are the intended readership, the approach needs to be more scholarly. Either way, there will always be fearless critics who believe you should have adopted the other road and will tell you so!

The histories of most institutions are written by a single author. At Laurentian University in Sudbury, three members of the History Department, Linda Ambrose, Matt Bray, and Sara Burke, decided early on to share the task. They got research support from Charles Levi (a splendid researcher who helped Martin Friedland with the history of the University of Toronto and served as research associate for the York history). They also drew in two senior scholars interested in Laurentian's history, Guy Gaudreau, a historian, and the sociologist Donald Dennie.

The collaborators might each have chosen to write about a different decade: Laurentian dates from 1960 and the book celebrates the university's golden jubilee. Instead, after introductory essays by Gaudreau about the origins and Bray about the founding of the university, we have eighteen chapters dealing with half a dozen different topics. Bray deals with university governance, and with the relations between Laurentian and its three federated colleges (Sudbury, Huntington, and Thorneloe). Dennie discusses academic programs and research, Burke devotes three chapters to the student experience, Gaudreau examines French-language education and bilingualism, and Ambrose deals with women at the university and with the Laurentian faculty. A brief conclusion is presumably a collaborative effort.

The time divisions make sense. The 1960s were a period of growth and challenge. The years from 1972 to 1985 were, for Laurentian (and not a few other young universities), years of transition. The post-1985 era is seen as 'the modern age,' when the university developed within limits defined in the earlier years. Because the history is divided along topical lines, each author tends to repeat things that one or more of the others have said in a different context. Even though each chapter is valuable from a scholarly point of view, the total effect is occasionally irritating.

The most sparkling chapters are Sara Burke's about Laurentian's students (although these, like the others chapters, could have been made still more interesting with interviews. Levi reportedly did some interviews, but there is little evidence of them.) This is fortunate, because these are the three chapters alumni are most likely to read. This segment of the book is likely to please a large part of its intended readership. Outside of that group, it is hard to imagine many people reading this book with much enjoyment. There is lots of useful information about the struggle for faculty participation in university governance, for a greater place for Franco-Ontarians and bilingualism, and for an equal place for women, but the accounts are based on the written record and seem rather bloodless. Even less interesting to outsiders are the chapters about curriculum and research. The latter seems to be a problematic area. We learn that Laurentian faculty are doing more research than they used to, as indicated by an increase in the amount of external grants and the number of publications. Donald Dennie adds that 'these criteria must also take into consideration quality, as measured by the number of publications in periodicals of national and international reputation' (151). Here he thinks Laurentian has fallen short. But is it possible to measure quality by means of citation counts? The reader may want to know...